Beachcomber: 100 years old and looking forward to the next 100

LOOKING back to last week's election, I am astounded that all who have commented on the results seem to have become so focused on the traditional squabbling between Conservative and Labour that they appear to have totally missed what may well turn out to be the most significant feature of all.

I refer, in case you too have missed it, to the results of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

In last week's election, there were 12 Monster Raving Loony candidates who polled a total of 3,890 votes.

That was eight votes down on their 2015 score of 3,898 votes, but in 2015 they fielded no fewer than 27 candidates. This works out at an average of 324.

17 votes for each Loony this time compared with 144.37 last time which is an average increase in vote of 125 per cent. Compared with this, the size of the swings in Labour, Conservative and even Ukip votes amount to no more than an inverted pyramid of piffle, as Boris Johnson might put it.

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Indeed, if we extrapolate the 125 per cent increase into the future, we calculate that the Loony candidates will each score an average of 729.4 votes at the next election, 1641.1 at the election after that, and 3,692.5 the following time.

None of those figures is likely to be enough to give a good chance of taking a seat, but if we continue the process, we quickly find out that in a mere 16 elections' time, the average vote for a Loony candidate will be around 62 million, which is significantly more than the entire electorate.

How, you may ask yourselves, can this possibly come about and what steps should we be taking to prepare for it?

Clearly, in order for each candidate to score more than the total electorate, there must be an appallingly high level of electoral fraud with voters registered in a large number of constituencies and rushing around the country to vote in all of them.

Also, even taking into account the electoral fraud, we will have had to have a massive increase in Loony immigration to provide an electorate large enough to give every Loony candidate so many votes.

Furthermore, the Monster Raving Loony party itself will have to examine some of its own policies.

They have, for example, for some time had the eminently sensible policy of issuing a 99p coin, but they should perhaps even now be asking themselves how much a 99p coin will be worth in 16 elections' time.

Even in the highly unlikely case of every government running its full five-year term, 16 elections will take us forward only 80 more years, which is still before the end of the 21st century.

The present government, if you recall, recently issued a 12-sided one pound coin. Ostensibly this was to replace the old circular coin, but the real reason was pure nostalgia for the old 12-sided threepenny bit.

The purchasing power of the new £1 coin is exactly the same as the old 3d one hundred years ago. At the same rate of inflation, the Loony's 99p will be worth less than 2p in 80 years' time.